Editorial
Issue 01 2016, Vol 01

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Ketil Thorgersen

Stockholm University - HSD / University College of Music Education in Stockholm (SMI)

Abstract

It is with great pleasure I write this first editorial for the European Journal of Philosophy in the Arts. The journal was born as an idea after a stimulating conference in Frankfurt, Germany in the International Society for Philosophy in Music Education in the summer of 2015. It struck me that there are only a few journals for publishing texts concerning more theoretical and philosophical texts within arts education. Within Music Education, there is one journal with this particular focus, Philosophy of Music Education Review (PMER). There is also Action, Criticism and Theory (ACT). Both are good journals, but both belong to the American tradition of philosophy and political thought. From my experience, coming from a multidisciplinary department of the arts, it struck me that much of the philosophical and theoretical educational debate is shared between the arts – or can be interesting between the arts because of their differences. It with the ambition to provide an open and stimulating platform for such discussion that EJPAE now is launched.

EJPAE is also based on certain ideological values. The journal seeks to be a forum for democratic discussion of high quality thought. This does not mean that everything is published, but that no one should be hindered from publishing or reading because of money. In mys PhD thesis (Thorgersen, 2009) I wrote as a kind of protest at the first page:” Knowledge cannot be copyrighted” Since then one of my research interests has been to investigate questions of openness, availability and democracy in academic life as well as in music education practices. This journal is my small contribution to the openness of academic thought.

I also have to thank everyone who have been willing to support this endeavor. The board that has been willing to help to start up this journal, the reviewers who have generously contributed with their time and of course the writers who have trusted their fine academic work in the hands of a new and unproved journal. In this first issue we have four articles, all of them coming from the field of music education.

The first article by Elin Angelo, discusses how a French horn player pedagogue describes her professional knowledge. This is done by a very interesting use of concepts of topography, a/t/t-ography and c/a/r/t-ography – helped by as different theories as Gadamer, Humboldt and Deleuze and Guattari.

The second article, “Snacking on Knowledge and Feel Good – Challenging discourses on arts in education”, is written by a team of researchers, Kristina Holmberg, Marie-Helene Zimmerman Nilsson, Claes Ericsson and Monica Lindgren. By analysing several empirical studies they identify three discourses in Swedish arts education, A Curriculum discourse a Feel-good discourse, and a Snacking on knowledge discourse.

The third article, “Cultural Citizenship through aesthetic communication in Swedish schools – democracy, inclusion and equality in the face of assessment policies”, by Cecilia Ferm Almqvist uses the theories of Hannah Arendt to discuss questions of citizenship, relationships, opportunities and power for participants in music education.

The fourth article, “’Possbilism’, and Expectations in Arts Education” by me, Ketil Thorgersen is an attempt to discuss how expectations play a role for all participants in any arts education. The discussion makes use of theories from Deleuze and Guattari, John Dewey and Arne Næss, the latter who coined the term ‘possibilism’. I argue that play with expectations is a way to improve not only education, but even life.

I am thrilled to have this first issue out in the open, and welcome new contributions for the next issue. A deadline for that one is 31st of December 2016. Untill then: Enjoy reading these articles!